'Well', cops are puzzled

After spending one full month, interrogating 500 people, gathering three forensic experts’ opinion and airing several unconfirmed theories, 11 police teams have failed to make even a single arrest in the mysterious death case of three minor girls in Maharashtra’s Bhandara district.

Forget arrest, now they have not just ruled out the rape theory, but have also made up their minds to direct their investigative efforts to find out whether it was a case of murder, suicide or accident.

The girls, aged 11, eight, and six, were reported missing after school hours on February 14. Their bodies were found in a well near a farmhouse in Murmadi village of Bhandara district two days later.

With rape now being ruled out, the Bhandara police are investigating if the deaths were a case of murder or suicide. “Our case is based on medical opinion. We lodged a complaint after the post-mortem report said there was rape. Now, experts say it’s a case of drowning. So the case is now being investigated to establish whether the girls fell in accidentally, whether they were pushed in or if they jumped,” said a senior police inspector.

The police detained several people. But the autopsy report was later criticised by experts. “The procedure was unscientific,” said forensic experts.

The investigators’ biggest lead now is eyewitness accounts of two men who saw the three girls playing near the well the day they went missing.

Police sources said a witnesses told them that he saw the girls around 3.30pm on February 14. “This means the incident took place after that time,” said the officer.

The bodies were discovered on February 16 by the well owner. “The well is 18 feet dry, 10 feet wet and 10 metres wide. The trajectory when a person slips is different from when he is pushed in. The position of the bodies in the well shows they fell in accidentally or they jumped. There were no marks of resistance on their bodies either,” said an officer.

On March 3, this newspaper reported that tests had found no male DNA in any of the samples collected, the diatom test indicated that the girls had died of drowning — the microscopic diatoms were present in the bone marrow samples, indicating the girls were breathing when they entered the water and their hearts had pumped the diatoms to various organs. Had they been killed and thrown in, the diatoms would have reached no further than the lungs.

Two pairs of slippers were also found near the well, among other items. One pair was the eldest girl’s. A third pair was not found at all. “All the slippers had soil in their sole. The samples were sent for forensic analysis on March 5. The results, which came in recently, show that the soil was definitely from near the well,” said another police officer.

He added the police took a dozen soil samples from near the girls’ residence, school and other areas. The only soil that matched the dirt on the slippers was from the area near the well.

The results and accounts of two eyewitnesses more or less establishes that the girls must have walked 1.5km from their home to the well, where they were seen playing.

Already, a team of forensic experts from Mumbai has said there was no evidence of rape.
“Our fact-finding team’s report also mentioned that a teacher from the girls’ school said the eldest girl had, on February 11, attempted to take her two younger siblings out of school telling them that their mother had called them for a Hurda party,” said Nirmala Samant-Prabhavalkar, Maharashtra in-charge of the NCW.

Hurda, which is chana baked in a bonfire, is a popular local event that families organise. “The teacher did not allow them and the girl went back.”

Reportedly, a local shopkeeper told the police that the girls came to him on February 14 to buy a packet of Gems. “They paid with a Rs100 note. They had earlier given the shopkeeper a Rs500 note on a previous occasion. When we questioned the girls’ grandmother on this issue, we found there had been some quarrels at home over this,” said Prabhavalkar. She added that the investigators had lost precious time investigating the alleged rape.

@s_somen